The present invention relates generally to a coffee brewer including a mechanism to eject a used coffee cartridge from a drawer and into a used cartridge bin after brewing.
Coffee brewers are used to make coffee. A desired amount of coffee grounds are usually scooped out of a coffee container and manually added to a metal or paper filter. Pressurized hot water flows into and through the filter, and the coffee grounds flavor the hot water to form coffee. The coffee then collects in a coffee pot for serving. After brewing is complete, the used coffee grounds are discarded. If a paper filter is used, the filter and coffee grounds are thrown out together. If a metal filter is used, the coffee grounds are thrown out and the metal filter is cleaned before reusing.
Coffee cartridges have also been employed in coffee brewers. A coffee cartridge includes a predetermined amount of coffee contained within a sealed porous paper shell. The coffee cartridge is manually added to the coffee brewer. When brewing is complete, the entire coffee cartridge is manually removed from the coffee brewer and discarded. A new coffee cartridge can then be added to the coffee brewer to make a fresh pot of coffee. A drawback to prior coffee cartridges is that they must be manually removed from the coffee brewer and thrown away. This can be messy because the coffee cartridge is wet and can drip and stain the surfaces surrounding the coffee pot.
Hence, there is a need in the art for a coffee brewer that automatically ejects a coffee cartridge from the coffee brewer and overcomes the shortcomings and drawbacks of the prior art.